China may overtake the United States to become the world's second largest exporter in 2007 if its current growth speed continues in the field continues, a senior trade official said.

China may overtake the United States to become the world's second largest exporter in 2007 if its current growth speed continues in the field continues, a senior trade official said.

Currently China ranks third after Germany and the United States in terms of export volume. Though it is highly possible that China will surpass the US to be next only to Germany as the second largest exporting country this year, Vice Minister of commerce, Yu Guangzhou said.

In 2006, China's export volume trailed that of the United States by less than $70 billion. Its export growth speed was seven percentage points higher than that of the US, Xinhua news agency reported.

Calculated with the current growth rate, China's export may possibly exceed that of the US by 50 billion US dollars this year, he said.

Yu said that China's foreign trade structure has been gradually optimised through re-adjusting tax rebate policies and processing trade policies. The export of high energy consuming and high pollution products has dropped sharply.

Experts estimate that if China maintains its foreign trade growth rate, it will replace Germany to become the world's top exporter next year.

Customs statistics show that in the first half of this year, China's foreign trade volume reached $980.9 billion, up 23.3 per cent year-on-year. Of this, export grew 27.6 per cent to $546.7 billion, while import grew 18.2 per cent to $434.2 billion.

The strong growth momentum was also visible in India-China bilateral trade as well. During January-June this year, trade increased to $17.20 billion, achieving an impressive growth of 47.97 per cent over the same period last year.